


Final Notes

by miidniight



Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Dadza, Dissociation, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memories, Mentioned Dave | Technoblade, Mentioned Toby Smith | Tubbo, Mentioned TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Wilbur Soot, Mild Blood, Sleepy Bois Inc Being a Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miidniight/pseuds/miidniight
Summary: Phil works through what went down as he reminisces on memories of Wilbur.
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s), Philza & Wilbur Soot
Series: Dream SMP Oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018798
Comments: 2
Kudos: 99





	Final Notes

**Author's Note:**

> heyo this is a sequel to my fic [unfinished symphony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26922964), but it's not necessary to have read it before reading this one. enjoy :)!

When it was all said and done, Phil found himself feeling rather numb.

He sat on the edge of one of the many holes that now made up more of L’Manburg than the city itself, feet dangling into the pit of dirt and crumbled stone beneath him. The withers had been defeated, Techno, Dream, and their “Team of Chaos” as they had called it long since gone. Everything was, for the moment, relatively calm.

Phil knew that somewhere Tubbo was off making preparations to fix the destruction of his country (because that’s what L’Manburg was now, Tubbo’s country). Tommy was either assisting him or off scheming on his own, cooking up a plan that would result in him with his discs back - something Phil had gathered, at this point and time, meant more to him than anything but Tubbo.

Phil wondered if Wilbur would be up there with Tubbo had he still been alive, wondered if he himself remained after all his years of absence.

Losing people was something Phil expected, after all it had happened many, many times over his long life. None, however, had ever affected him this much. No one else had ever had Phil sit there, stare blank and mind filled with a peculiar tingling that spread down to the tips of his toes. No one else had ever made Phil feel such a disconnect from what was happening around him, as if time was too slow and too fast at the same time, every detail gone the second he managed to register it.

But no one else had ever been his son either.

Phil inhaled deeply, letting it go in a slow, heavy breath as he continued to stare at a bit of iron that had been dislodged from its ore glinting in the setting sun, using that to keep him anchored to the world. He had a feeling if he tried to focus on something else, like the bloody diamond sword behind him or the rough, rust coated sleeves of his robe, the wall of nothing that was keeping all of his emotions at bay would crumble.

There was a soft, worn black beanie clenched tightly in Phil’s trembling fingers, the only thing he had had time to grab off of Wilbur before rushing off to help fight the Withers with the others. One death, especially for who it had been, was enough for the day - Phil had no desire to be witness to any more.

Someone placed a hand on his shoulder, and Phil blinked before glancing up at them unseeingly. It was NIkki, tears dripping from her eyes and hair pulled back into a knot tied messily on top of her head. A pained, watery smile greeted Phil as she offered him a gray blanket held in her hands.

“It’s getting cold, but I figured you might want to stay out here a little while longer,” she told him, choking on half her words so they came out strangled and strained.

One hand going up to cradle her face in his hands, Phil wiped away a tear with one gentle thumb, heart aching dully with the way she huffed out a sob and leaned further into his touch. “Thank you, Nikki,” he whispered quietly, pulling back after another moment. She nodded and Phil guessed that she was unable to speak past the noises pushing out of her chest as she covered her mouth and began to walk away.

Later he would be there to comfort her, but right now Phil needed time to himself.

He tugged the cloth around his shoulders and where his wings drooped to the ground, not bothering to keep them from dragging in the dirt and dust as he usually would. It seemed like it took too much effort and energy, too much of what Phil did not have.

Slow, silent tears began to fall from his eyes, landing on the hand still holding Wilbur’s beanie as if letting it go would kill Phil. He had known that eventually Wilbur was going to die, but Phil had never expected - never _wanted_ \- it to be by his doing. It was supposed to be of old age, with his friends and family by his side, wishing him well as he moved on to what came next, not in a half destroyed cave with only his father looking in his eyes, pushing a _sword_ through his _chest_.

Phil sucked a shaky breath into his mouth, his free hand going to pull his ever present hat low over his face.

Wilbur had always had dreams too big to contain.

Once, when he had been young, about five or six, he had proudly (and with a lisp, having just lost his two front teeth) exclaimed to Phil, “I’m going to climb the tallest tree and see the whole world!”

Phil, focusing on writing a letter to an old friend, had barely looked up to run his hand through the wild chocolate curls atop Wilbur’s head, idly making a note that he would have to cut them soon, and replied, “You do that, Will.”

It wasn’t until half an hour later when Phil registered just how quiet the house was that he had realized what he told a little boy prone to doing stupid things that, half the time, never even crossed Phil’s mind as a possibility. With rushed, panicked movements, he had shoved his sandals onto his feet and all but yanked the door off its hinges as he had ripped it open and began calling Wilbur’s name.

After a few minutes of desperate cries, Phil had come across Wilbur halfway up a tree not too far from the house that was, actually, one of the tallest he had seen in the forest. Even while whimpering every few seconds and rubbing away the water on his face with his shoulder, Wilbur was still valiantly trying to get to the top, not giving up for a few tears and a frankly terrifying height. Phil trampled the fear that was making his breath speed up and spread his wings, flying up to where the boy was now reaching out to him with blubbering wails of, “Phil!”

“I got you, I got you,” he whispered into the top of Wilbur’s head as he pulled the child into his arms, not missing the way Wilbur clung to him like a lifeline. “What are you doing up there? You could have gotten hurt.”

“I just wanted to see the world,” Wilbur said into Phil’s robe, tears soaking through the material and dampening Phil’s shoulder beneath. 

Shushing him quietly, Phil pushed his wings down and down and down until they were hovering high above even the tree Wilbur had been climbing. “Open your eyes, Will. It’s okay, I’ve got you, but look you can see the world.”

Wilbur, sniffling and rubbing his runny nose away on his hand (Phil made a face upon seeing that - a bath would most certainly be the first thing they did when they returned home) before looking down with an expression that Phil could only describe as pure and utter awe.

Below them, the world stretched out like a picture in a book. The vibrant green of trees and grass was broken occasionally by a thin river that looped through the forest, teeming with fish that, from this high up, neither of them could see. Wilbur, as if trying to touch it, released his hold of Phil’s shirt with one hand and let it reach for the ground below them.

“One day you’ll get to explore and see it all, Will. But right now it’s time to go home and clean up, yeah?” Phil said, rubbing one hand consolingly down his back.

Wilbur had looked back at him, stars glimmering in his deep brown eyes with the hope of a future that Phil could see burning bright in his soul. “When I’m older, I’m gonna see the whole world, and then I’ll come back home and tell you about it… but only if you make the good cake.”

Phil had simply chuckled as he began to lower them slowly. “I’ll make the good cake.”

Their family had grown from the two of them to include Techno (a rather monotone and sarcastic twelve year old that for whatever reason got away with the stupidest things unscathed) and Tommy (an ankle biter that was louder than Phil had known was physically possible) when Wilbur was about ten. At first, he had hated it, unused to Phil’s attention being split between three different people.

But one day Phil had come back from a trip to gather some wood to find Tommy and Wilbur chasing Techno, who was wearing a paper crown and red blanket as a cape, screaming at the top of their lungs that they were going to take down the king.

Well, Wilbur said that. Tommy had mainly just screamed.

Since then they’d been inseparable.

Or at least Phil thought they had, today had proved him wrong.

Phil’s tears? They weren’t just for Wilbur. He had lost more than one son today. Phil had looked Techno dead in the eyes, seen the feral glee at the chaos and destruction - the _pain_ \- around them, and sensed none of the person he had raised looking back.

And God, it hurt.

Phil sucked in a wet breath, pulling the blanket tighter around him as he did so. Nikki had been right. As the sun dipped below the horizon, a chill had fallen over the remnants of L’Manburg in its wake. It blew through in a cold breeze that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Fighting back a shiver, Phil looked up momentarily, just in time to catch another blanket wrapped figure heading his direction. When they were close enough for Phil to see properly, he startled momentarily. 

There were, of course, those with more animalistic features (Techno’s ears and bottom teeth being the first painful example that popped into Phil’s mind), but he had never seen someone who looked so _clearly_ not human, covered head to toe in bright orange fur, head topped with a pair of distinctly foxy ears. 

“Um, excuse me?” they asked in a lilting, accented voice. “You-you’re Phil, right?”

“Yes that’s,” Phil cleared his throat of the croak and tremor that painted his words, raising his head further to look at the person in front of them more directly, “That’s me. Can I help you?”

For a moment, they just stared at each other: Phil, with confusion, wiping away the water on his cheeks, and the stranger with thinly masked sorrow, an ache on their heart that felt eerily similar to the one Phil could feel beating through every nerve ending in his body.

They shivered, mouth opening as they began to speak in a strained tone that told Phil just how close to breaking they were. “I-I’m Fundy- ” (the name rung a bell, and Phil assumed they were one of the people Tommy had listed off he could trust before rushing off to help Tubbo with the promise of coming to see him later) “ -I am… I was Wilbur’s son.”

Phil was frozen, eyes following as the man sat down next to him with hesitance. Phil didn’t blink, he didn’t breathe, he just stared and stared and stared, and wondered how (why) he had never heard about this. “Son?” Son? _Son_?

“Adopted, but… I was-Wilbur found me where L’Manburg was going to be built. He took me in. He… he raised me. I-Nikki said-Nikki said that you,” a swallow that looked painful just from watching it, “You were Wilbur’s dad…?”

Finally huffing out a sharp exhale, Phil cursed the way his throat closed up again with the threat of crying on the brink of spilling over. “Yeah, yeah, Wilbur… Wilbur was my boy.”

Again, they were quiet, simply gazing at each other with eyes full of understanding and hurt and grief, swirling with unshed tears and an arrow through the heart created by and made up of nothing but pure sorrow. Phil knew, instinctually, that the agony that was pumping in his veins was the same that was going through Fundy’s. Their souls were like reflections in a mirror - just as heavy and just as drained.

Fundy broke the silence with a near silent whisper of, “I miss him.”

Phil freed one arm from the confines of his blanket, wrapped it around Fundy’s shoulder and pulled his sobbing body into his green cloaked form. “Me too,” he responded, just as quietly, “Me too.”


End file.
